1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to insulating components located on a printed circuit board and, in particular, to an improved system, method, and apparatus for a card insulator having features that conform to height changes required by the components located on the card.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some hard disk drives (HDD) have a printed circuit board or card with components mounted thereto that face toward the enclosure or casting of the HDD. The components are typically electrically insulated from contact with the enclosure. One way of insulating the components is to position a thin, non-conductive sheet between the components and the enclosure. The sheet is usually flat and flexible, and may comprise a layer of laminated foam.
The components mounted to the card vary in size, particularly with regard to the height that they protrude from the surface of the card. As a result, card insulators tend to bow or deform in the areas where the clearances between the enclosure and the components is small. This problem is particularly acute with mobile and server HDDs having this type of card configuration.
One prior art solution to this problem is to provide holes in the insulator sheet for accommodating the tall components. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,674,652 to Forte, discloses cutouts 406 (FIGS. 2 and 3) in a shield wrap 400 for such purposes. Although this solution solves the card bowing problem, it defeats the primary purpose of the card insulator which is to protect components from accidental electrical shorting of the components to the base casting of the hard disk drive.
Another solution is disclosed in U.S. Patent App. Pub. 2005/0237663 to Nguyen. That reference shows and describes a film formed with permanent pockets 21 (FIG. 2) that are precisely contoured to the shapes and sizes of the underlying components. Although each of these prior art designs is workable, an improved solution for a card insulator having features that accommodate height changes required by the components located on the card without sacrificing the insulative purposes of the device would be desirable.